4 Reasons We Need To Retire the Batman Gay Joke

There’s actually a lot of jokes you can make at Batman’s expense. He’s a guy who runs around in a flying mammal costume. He’s a rich white guy who spends a lot of time beating up poor people, which is rich with unfortunate implications. He’s been written by Frank Miller.

But whenever there’s a Batman parody in comics, almost inevitably one joke will come up. Most recently it came up in “Supurbia”, a new book from BOOM! that ran last week. Yes, yet again, we’ve got Batman porking Robin. To be fair, it fits in well with the book, an attempt to combine “Real Housewives” dramatics with superhero tropes, but that said…

This marks, what, the billionth time that joke’s been made in pop culture? Here’s why it’s well past time to drop this particular stale joke.

#4) The Roots of It Are Actually Not Funny At All

This actually comes, fairly directly, from one of the worst periods in the history of the comics medium: the HUAC hearings of the 1950s. A quick review; a psychologist, Dr. Frederic Wertham, wrote “Seduction of the Innocent”. Easily forgotten amid the fact that these hearing shut EC down was the fact that Wertham basically saw gay propaganda everywhere: if he was on Fox News today, we’d consider him an ignorant loon. He’d be a close friend of the Kevin Keller-hatin’ One Million Moms. And that’s really where it got started; in the founding of the Comics Code, the ruining of EC Comics, and the medium being set back decades because of one busybody promoting an ignorant viewpoint. Which leads us to…

#3) It’s Homophobic To Varying Degrees

“Supurbia” actually handles it fairly off-screen (it’s more of a Batman/Nightwing than a Batman/Robin), but it is still a bit ignorant to just trot this joke out with no thought. We’ve all seen depictions of it that get a whole lot worse than the ones cited here, and it can get a bit uncomfortable pretty rapidly, especially when it equates homosexuality with child molestation. There’s crossing the line to be funny, and then there’s outright fear. The latter? Not funny.

To be fair, until recently the Batcondom was gathering a shitload of dust. He tended to have these long, drawn-out chaste romances with a woman, score once, and then DC shoved her so far into the fridge you could find her next to last week’s takeout.

Can I still make fun of the way Batman brings a 14 year old into what is basically a combat situation?

Or how Batman has the sense to dress up in dark colors that help him attack from the shaddows, but Robin is in every bright color imagineable and would be better served just carrying a sign that says “shoot me”? (I do remember Tiny Toons making a joke about that ).

How about that bringing Alfred, the former British commando, would be a better choice as a crime fighting partner (despite his advanced age) over a teenager who does fucking summersaults?

Hey those teenagers are a dime a dozen and occasionally come back to life anyway. You want to send your surgeon/cook/mechanic/housekeeper/machinist/communications tech/tailor/decoy out into combat against clown-faced psychos every night? You can’t just pick those up from atemp agency.

That’s the other thing. There have been like 5 Robins over the course of about 20 years in comic book time. Wouldn’t all of Batman’s regular enemies notice that there is a brand new Robin the exact time a similar looking child starts hanging around with Bruce Wayne? Maybe the Gotham City Family Services?

The problem is not just that its homophobic, but that it implies that sex between an adult man and an underaged partner, regardless of that person’s gender, is somehow funny and not rape.

A good counter example would of course be the Midnighter. Not just because he is an adult gay man in a “stable” relationship, but because Ellis (and others) work so hard to portray just how flawed and fucked up he is, like all humans. Too often homosexual characters are either punchlines or carefully scrubbed to avoid the impression that the writer(s) are assigning negative traits to homosexuals as a group.

Garth Ennis still makes it pretty damn funny. Tell me you guys read “The Pro”.
And even when he puts it in context its pretty good ie: Tech Knight in “The Boys”
But that being said I think Mr Ennis’ usage accounts for the 5% of the time that gag actually works.

I’m pretty sure the little blog I read on occasion just shit on one of the most acclaimed artists in comics, Frank Miller. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong. Otherwise this blog isn’t worth the one’s and zeroes it’s printed on. Just in case you just discoverd your first comic shop, here’s a Frank Miller primer:
The Dark Knight Returns (changed the industry forever)
Daredevil (saved the title in the 80’s)
Sin City
Ronin
Wolverine (w/ Chris Claremont. legendary.)
300
Elektra.